Gwenn Seemel: Crime Against Nature

Portraitist Gwenn Seemel turns her attention to the animal kingdom in the exhibition Crime Against Nature and draws whimsical but politically relevant parallels between animal and human sexuality. She offers up a picture of a genderqueer biosphere populated by promiscuous squirrels, infertile camels, lactating male bats, lesbian dolphins, bisexual bonobos and an array of other freak-flag-flying beasts of surf and turf. As fun as the imagery may be, the show powerfully rebuts right-wingers who point to the animal kingdom as “proof” that sex in nature is uniformly vanilla.Through Jan. 12.

Ecologically themed art tends to be dull and sanctimonious, but not so in the hands of Wesley Younie. His idylls of environmental paradise lost abound with equal parts whimsy and intelligence. In the ...